Network coverage of Iraq was at its most hopeful the
weekend that Iraqis voted in their first ever free, democratic
elections. For a short while it was seen as an incredible
transformation. Just two years earlier, Iraq was controlled by a brutal
dictator; now, the country was set upon the path to join Israel as one
of the Middle East’s only democratic states. But just days after the
January elections, network reporters reverted to a more skeptical
stance, with stories placing the heaviest emphasis on the problems
confronting Iraqis on their road to democracy.

Out of 343 stories that discussed Iraq’s political
process, negative news stories outnumbered positive ones by a
four-to-three margin (124 to 92), with another 127 stories providing a
mixed or neutral view. More than a third of the stories featuring
optimistic or hopeful developments were broadcast over the course of
just two days, January 30 and 31, the moment of Iraq’s historic
elections.

With all three news anchors in Iraq, the networks gave
the elections heavy coverage. While all of the evening news broadcasts
had featured gloomy predictions before the vote, the large turnout and
relative tranquility of the day provided a pleasant surprise. Of the 40
stories that focused on Iraq’s political process on January 30 and 31,
fully 80 percent cast the situation in hopeful and optimistic terms.

“Iraqis came out by the many millions, literally, to
take part in an Election Day pilgrimage,” CBS anchor Dan Rather
enthused from Baghdad’s “Green Zone” on January 30, the day of the
vote. “By the time the polls closed today, the celebrations spoke of a
new Iraq, one with the potential for a future brighter than many people
thought possible before the vote.” The same day, ABC’s David Wright
interviewed a Kurdish voter whose father had been killed by Saddam’s
regime. “Can you put into words what the feeling was like when you put
that paper in the ballot box?” Wright asked.

“Freedom. Happiness. Victory,” came the enthusiastic reply.

Before the vote, reporters expected that Iraqi voters
would be thwarted by terrorism. “This has to be the most dangerous
political campaign in the world, with suicide bombings and
assassination attempts just about every day,” ABC’s Wright fretted on
January 9. As for election day itself, “there could be a bloodbath,”
NBC’s Jim Maceda predicted on the January 17 Nightly News.

Three days before the election, CBS’s Rather ominously
passed along the terrorists’ threats: “Fear is running high as the
insurgency’s campaign of intimidation left more Iraqis dead today.
Bombs exploded at two Baghdad schools that are expected to serve as
polling stations, and anti-election leaflets were everywhere
threatening to, quote, ‘wash the streets of Baghdad with the blood of
voters.’”

The next night, January 28, CBS reporter Elizabeth
Palmer despaired that “the first taste of democratic choice for many
people will be a bitter one. They not only have to decide who to vote
for on Sunday, but when to vote. One young man asked us this morning
whether he’d have a better chance of avoiding a terrorist attack if he
went to the polls in the morning, or the afternoon.”

Journalists’ pessimism returned soon after the votes
were counted. When Iraq’s newly-elected parliamentarians — representing
parties that did not even exist two years earlier — were slow to name a
new government, reporters voiced impatience. On April 21, NBC’s Richard
Engel complained that the naming of a new government had been held up
by “paralyzing horse trading.” Three days later, he declared that the
Iraqi government “remains paralyzed by disputes over power....Too much
negotiating, it’s dragged on since January.”

Two weeks later, on May 8, Engel reported that while
“Iraq finally has a nearly-complete government after nearly 13 weeks of
excruciating negotiations” the country “in general, is floundering
without decisive leadership.”

Engel was hardly the only reporter seeing dark clouds.
On August 12, CBS’s Sharyn Alfonsi was upset that women might be
victimized if the new Iraqi constitution were too rooted in Islam.
“Islamic hardliners who were contained under Saddam’s regime have
re-emerged. Their teachings encourage men to discipline their wives and
daughters and, as their views become more widespread, so too could
domestic violence.”

Two weeks later, on August 28, CBS’s Lara Logan
chastised the Iraqis for failing to finalize their constitution:
“Iraq’s unity is in question here in this hall, where their leaders
were supposed to agree on a draft constitution inside this very hall.
But instead, just hours before the midnight deadline, it stood empty.
There is still no consensus, but at least the parties have not stopped
talking....The constantly shifting deadlines have turned into political
farce.”

A few days earlier, when it became clear that the
constitution submitted to voters would not meet all of the demands of
the minority Sunni group, ABC’s Martha Raddatz posited the no-win
situation facing the U.S. and the rest of the international coalition.
Reporting from the Pentagon, Raddatz explained the reasoning:

“This is a very, very worrisome development to some
military officials and defense officials in the building. Because if
the Sunnis do not feel empowered, they believe the insurgency will get
worse.” But the Sunnis could also compete in the constitutional
referendum: “If they vote this down, everything goes back to square
one. The government dissolves, they have to start over again.”

Reporters were guilty of letting the disorder of
day-to-day democratic politics blind them to the potentially wonderful
story unfolding before them. Only occasionally, such as the January
elections, did journalists lift their eyes from the messy details of
Iraqi politics and focus on the revolutionary big picture.

Another such occasion was after Lebanon’s “Cedar
Revolution,” where peaceful protests helped lead to the withdrawal of
Syrian troops who had occupied that country for nearly 30 years. NBC
anchor Brian Williams saw the chance for a positive tide to sweep the
Middle East, and allowed that some of the credit might rest with
American policy in Iraq. Introducing a March 8 story, he described it
as “a heady time for a White House that has been calling for the spread
of freedom and watching it slowly break out in some spots.”

Reporter David Gregory followed Williams: “The
President boasted today that historic change is sweeping the Middle
East, and he left little doubt he feels vindicated.” But from the White
House lawn he warned, “they insist no one here is gloating. Today, the
President said democracy in the region will require a generational
commitment, even when the good news these days disappears.”

When it came to Iraq’s democratic revolution, the good news disappeared from the network newscasts all too quickly.

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